TARA WESTON'S GUARDIAN, Part One

Richie Travers is a world-class burglar who breaks into the Weston mansion expecting to find treasures. Instead he finds slashed bodies everywhere!

Submitted:Dec 21, 2010
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PART ONE:

Richie Travers carefully removed the picklock from the
keyhole of the French windows of the Glen Iris estate, then
looked up at the pale blue alarm box above the windows.

"Fingers crossed!" thought Richie, mindful of his first
stay in prison, half his lifetime ago after the "carefully
de-activated" alarm decided to go off anyway, despite his best
efforts to bypass it. But since then Richie had spent nearly a
decade of his young life in the pen and had learnt lock picking
from the experts. So, with any luck, this time the alarm would
not shriek as he opened the door.

He placed the picklock back into a small, plastic wallet,
returned the wallet to an inner pocket of his vest, then reached
out for the door handle with his right hand. Holding the handle,
he breathed deeply for a second or two to steel himself. Then,
carefully easing the French windows open, he eased around the
side to glide inside catlike, rather than risk opening the
windows wide.

Inside at last, he stopped to carefully ease shut the
windows, then reached into his outer breast pocket to remove a
small penlight. He pressed the small switch on the torch, and
nothing happened Cursing to himself, Richie pressed the switch a
little harder and a pinprick of yellowy light shot out to
illuminate a small area. Doing his best not to trip or bump into
furniture, Richie slowly made his way around the small sitting
hall.

A careful examination of the ground floor revealed
nothing of interest, since it was mainly entrance halls. So, he
crept up one of two wide staircases to the first floor where he
located a large sitting room.

"Well, one of them, anyway," thought Richie. Although
Laura and Stephen Weston we're quite in the same financial
bracket as Joseph Gutnick or Kerry Packer, asAustralia's third wealthiest family, the
Westons were still well moneyed. "So this must be only one of
their sitting rooms," he reasoned. Before entering the Westons's
home, Richie had acquired a copy of the blueprints of the manor
and had established that it was a six-storey mansion with an
average twelve rooms per floor.

Still half expecting to hear the outside alarm go off
(and fearing it might be a silent alarm linked directly to D24
inMelbourne) Richie started
slowly around the sitting room.

Apart from a few silver trinkets, the only things of
interest to the burglar were two Aboriginal Dream-Time paintings
by celebrated Australian artist Ainslie Roberts: "The Burgin Gin"
(which showed a full sized Aboriginal warrior being attacked by
half metre tall Aboriginal warriors wielding shining golden
spears taller than themselves. And "Liru and Kunia" which
depicted two large serpents fighting in the red sand of
theSimpson Desert.

"These should fetch a nice commission," said Richie at a
whisper. He knew at least two or three private collectors who
were desperate for Ainslie Roberts works and were not concerned
how they acquired them.

After carefully checking for alarm presses on the wall
behind the paintings (for fear they might be separate to the main
alarm that he had already deactivated), Richie carefully removed
the first painting. Instead of cutting the painting from the
frame and damaging it (thus reducing its value), he carefully
removed the painting from the frame, then reached into the sack
he was carrying and removed a long postal cylinder. He carefully
rolled up the painting and slid it into the cylinder, then placed
the cylinder into his sack. Then he removed the second painting
and repeated the procedure.

Although not usually nervous, Richie had been on edge
ever since entering the French windows. Feeling a cold chill run
down his spine, he considered departing with the two paintings.
Though not worth a fortune, they would each fetch a few thousand
dollars. "And maybe I can come back in a few months ... once I've
got my nerves back!" But logic told him that it would be ten
times harder to enter the manor house next time. "Once they find
the paintings gone the security system will be revamped to
blazes!"

So, with icy fingers playing his spine like a xylophone,
Richie started across to the door to the corridor.

Outside he lingered for a moment. His eyes had adjusted
to the feeble beam thrown by the penlight. So there was less
chance of him stumbling into furniture. Still, logic (and icy
tendrils of fear gripping his heart) told him it was best to take
no chances. So, he started slowly down the wide corridor,
stopping at the next door.

Gripping the doorknob in his left hand this time, Richie
steeled himself for a few moments, then swung the door inward. He
had half expected the door to be locked. But even in a security
conscious district like Glen Iris, there was no reason to lock
inner doors. And the sitting room had not been locked. So, as he
had expected, the door swung wide easily. Too easily, and for a
nervous second, he feared he would lose control of the door to
hear it crash into the inside wall.

Just in time he managed to control his nerves, and the
door, and stepped silently inside. And found himself standing
face to face with a Doberman Pinscher.

His first instinct was to race back out into the
corridor, trying to pull the door closed in time to keep the
guard dog at bay. He eased back into the hallway, and started to
slowly ease the door shut.

He had shut the door firmly, when he realised that the
dog had made no move toward him. "It must have seen me!" he
realised. "And even if it didn't, Dobermans have a sense of smell
twenty thousand times as strong as ours. So it can't have failed
to notice me!"

Logic told him to head back toward the ground floor and
exit the manor through the French windows. But determined not to
be so easily spooked, Richie forced himself to pull open the door
and step back into the darkened room.

Trying his best to control his racing heart and panting
breath, Richie stepped up to the tallish, black dog and shone the
penlight directly into its eyes. Expecting the dog to whine and
flinch (or attack!), Richie kept within a quick step of the
hallway door. However, the Doberman neither whined, flinched nor
attacked. So, hesitantly, Richie reached out one hand to tap the
beast gently upon the muzzle.

The cold, enamel muzzle.

Richie sighed audibly as he realised that it was only a
plaster dog. Then he looked round nervously again, hoping no one
in an adjoining room had heard the loud outrush of
breath.

For one crazy instant, Richie thought of taking the
plaster Doberman to punish the Westons for the anxiety it had
caused him. But logic dictated it was too bulky to fit into his
sack, and much too heavy for its value to waste time on it
anyway.

So, ignoring the faux Doberman, Richie started round the
room, carefully evaluating each item in turn by the beam of the
penlight, before deciding whether it was worth taking or
not.

The room was filled with plaster or jade statues and
statuettes from pocket-size up to need-a-forklift-to-move-it
size. In the end Richie took just two small jade vases, which he
carefully wrapped in newspaper, both to protect them and to stop
them clinking in his sack.

Then, after one last look around the room, he returned to
the wide corridor and started toward the next room to the left,
deciding to do all the rooms on one side first, then return to
investigate the right-hand rooms later.

After more than an hour, he had finished the first floor
rooms and had only picked up three paintings -- although all
three would pick up a few thousand dollars each -- half a dozen
small silver knickknacks, and the two jade vases.

"A small haul for the third wealthiest family inAustralia," said Richie, feeling vexed.
Although normally an easy going bloke, he couldn't help feeling a
little cheated at all the work he had had to do, for the little
he had to show for it.

Not a man of violence, Richie was reluctant to check the
upper floors, knowing the Westons and their domestics were asleep
up there. "I should have waited till they went on their holidays
in a few months," he thought. But just out of prison, he'd needed
cash urgently and the Weston manor house seemed a surprisingly
easy tickle. So far though, it had hardly been a tickle at
all.

"Still, the second floor might be safe enough," he
decided. He knew the Westons themselves lived on the fifth floor,
which had been converted to a private penthouse. "So, stay well
clear of the fifth floor and I ought to be relatively safe." He
hoped. Of course, the domestics could live on any of the
remaining floors for all that his blueprints showed. However, he
was prepared to gamble that any occupied bedrooms would be locked
at night. So, as long as he was careful trying the doorknobs, he
should be safe.

After a moment's indecision, he started across to the
wide, carpeted staircases in the centre of the building. One of
two that led up to the next floor. Just past the twin staircases
was a small, wire-framed elevator. But having been caught twice
previously for burglary, he was not careless enough to risk using
the elevator. If the rattles and crashes didn't awaken the entire
household, the shrieking of the cables and antiquated motor
starting and stopping undoubtedly would.

"Besides, I'm not going any further than the second
floor, Richie decided. "So who needs an elevator?"

Half an hour later he had completed the second floor. On
the plus side he had only encountered one locked door and had
managed to slip away unnoticed by anyone sleeping within. On the
negative side, he had found little worth lifting. An original
Norman Lindsay painting would fetch notably more than the two
Ainslie Robertses combined, so he had taken the time to liberate
it. But nothing else had been worth adding to his meagre
stash.

After much soul-searching, he reluctantly went up to the
third floor. In the first room he found a handful of small silver
cups in what was obviously the games room. There was also a
$50,000 full sized pool table, which he had no possible hope of
moving. So he was forced to settle for the silver
trophies.

Returning to the corridor, he paused for a second,
tempted to leave now. When from overhead came a sudden shriek,
then a female voice crying, "No, oh God no!" Then a muffled, half
choking sound, followed by silence.

Startled, Richie looked up as though possessing X-ray
vision, hoping to see the crier through the ceiling. "Nightmares,
I guess," he said, knowing that the Westons had a twelve-year-old
daughter, Tara. "I guess even rich kids can have nightmares," he
thought. "I suppose their bad dreams are about stock market
crashes; governments of the world getting serious about taxing
the rich; about the United States no longer functioning as a
haven for billion-dollar tax-avoiders from other countries
...?"

Despite his fear of being caught by the Westons, Richie
reluctantly continued hunting through the rooms on the third
floor. He would not dare try rifling through the fourth floor or
the fifth floor suites with the Westons sleeping up there. But he
decided it was worth risking a bleary-eyed valet or
maid.

The next room was a large den, with bookcases lining
three walls, and a large oaken table taking up nearly half the
floor space. At first Richie considered leafing through the books
in the hope of finding rare first editions. But then, as a cry
came from the fifth floor again, he decided against it.

Besides, he had already noticed what to the untrained eye
looked like a fireplace. But which instinct and prison training
told him was a false-front covering a wall safe.

He resisted the urge to race across to the fireplace and
probably fall in the dark. Instead he stepped across slowly,
knelt, and began carefully feeling around the white frontispiece,
which was wood moulded and painted to look like ironwork. After a
few moments, he found a small button on one side of the
fireplace.

Half expecting alarms to go off, he pressed the button.
With an (he hoped) almost inaudible whirring of gears, the
fireplace slid up the wall to reveal a fairly standard looking
small metal wall safe.

Richie removed the glove from his right hand, then took a
small piece of emery-board from his sack to sensitise his
fingertips. "If only I had one of those electronic gizmos to clip
onto the safe, it could spin the tumblers and crack the safe in
two minutes while I stood back and watched," he thought. Then
looking at the unimpressive safe, he decided, "I can probably
open it in two minutes anyway."

In reality it took nearly five minutes to crack the safe.
However, to his dismay, no bounty lay within.

"Damn!" said Richie, taking out the contents: a small
automatic pistol (minus the clip), a faded travel brochure --
which looked old enough to be for the maiden voyage of the
Titanic -- a small portion of at least week-old meat pie on a
lilac saucer, and three plastic $100 bills.

"Oh well, this is something, at least," said Richie,
pocketing the $300. He returned the other things to the safe and
quickly departed the room.

In the next few rooms he found other trinkets, but still
nothing of great value. "They must keep all their loot in a
walk-in safe on the fifth floor," he had begun to realise,
wondering if he dared try up there after all?

As he stepped into the corridor, once more cries rang out
from the floor above. But this time it was the voice of a mature
man. "Bad dreams must be contagious," thought Richie as he pulled
open the door to the final room, stepped into the room and stared
in disbelief at the sight before him:

A middle-aged man and woman were sitting up in bed, both
seemingly staring toward Richie. Except that both had had their
eyes plucked out.

Thinking it an illusion of the poor light from the
penlight, Richie risked turning on the overhead light and stared
in horror. The man and woman had not only been blinded, but had
been all but boned by whoever had killed them. Entrails hung like
bloody spaghetti across a double bed stained red with their
blood.

Realising his fingers were sticky, Richie took out a
handkerchief and began to rub down his fingers as he stared in
amazement at the room. The walls, floor and ceiling looked like
something Jackson Pollock might have produced on a bad day. The
walls seemed to have been painted in gallons of red paint, except
that Richie didn't need to be told that it wasn't really red
paint.

"What the hell happened to my glove?" he wondered,
staring at his bare right hand. He silently cursed his
carelessness as he realised he had removed it to crack the safe
earlier, then had left the glove behind.

Looking away from the blood-soaked bed, Richie cursed his
own stupidity as he saw the perfect fingerprints he had left in
blood when he had turned on the bedroom light.

Striding across to the light, he hurriedly wiped away the
prints with the hanky. Then staring at the now sopping red hanky,
he wondered if he was making things worse rather than better.
Seeing two more fingerprints on the wall near the switch, he
hurriedly rubbed them away, before realising, "They could have
belonged to the murderer, not me." He considered returning to the
den to collect his glove, but had to think, "Was it on this
floor? Or one down?"

He had already returned to the corridor, when he heard
another muffled cry from upstairs, followed by the sound of
cascading water. For a moment he thought it had started to rain
outside, and looked round toward a bay window at the other end of
the corridor.

Then he realised, "The shower! Someone is taking a shower
up on the fifth floor!" Looking at his wristwatch he saw that it
was a little before1:00
AM.

"Who the hell takes a shower at this time?" he wondered.
Then he realised there was only one possible answer.

His first instinct was to flee. His second, to continue
up one more floor to start searching the fourth floor rooms in
the hope of locating valuables. However, the recollection of the
eviscerated couple in the room he had just vacated, made the
search for valuables no longer attractive.

Without even realising it, Richie started up the wide
staircase past the fourth landing and onto the fifth. It was only
as he started down the left-hand corridor, that he suddenly came
to his senses. "What the hell am I doing? It has to be the
murderer washing the blood off before leaving!"

As the muffled cry came again, he realised that both
showerer and crier were in rooms at the other end of the hallway.
"The logical thing to do is call the police, then make a hasty
exit before they get here," Richie decided.

He looked down the corridor in the hope of seeing a phone
on a stand. Then, reluctantly, he tried the knob of the nearest
door -- careful to use his left hand, which still had on its
protective glove.

Inside the master bedroom he found two telephones, both
with the cables cut. On the bed lay a beautiful blonde of at
least fifty, whom he knew from the society pages must be Laura
Weston. The man beside her was probably half a decade younger and
resembled Stephen Weston. As far as he could recall.

For one crazy moment Richie thought the Westons had
decided to take a bath, wearing pyjamas, in their own blood. Then
he realised that the gentle bobbing of the corpses was caused by
the torn waterbed that they lay upon.

"Got to get out of here now!" thought Richie. Despite
having spent nearly a third of his thirty-something years in
prison, Richie Travers was not a violent man. He knew that he
would fare no better than the Westons or their domestics if he
came face to face with whoever else had broken into the Weston
estate that night.

As he returned to the corridor again, the muffled cry
rang out again, from the next room down the hallway. And he
realised that it could only be the Westons's twelve-year-old
daughter, Tara.

"Why has he kept the girl alive after killing everyone
else?" wondered Richie as he started down the corridor to the
next door. Then he blushed as he realised the only possible
reason.

"With both parents dead, it's unlikely to be for ransom!"
he reasoned, blushing again.

Although he could hear the shower still running, he knew
that it could not continue much longer. "Got to get on with it
then," he thought as he tentatively gripped the doorknob and
swung the bedroom door inward.

Not quite knowing what to expect, Richie stepped into the
bedroom which obviously belonged to a young girl: posters of
Hanson and other teen heartthrobs lined the wall, along with two
bookcases of Barbie dolls and a seemingly near-infinite array of
Barbie companion dolls and accessories.

Of more interest though, was the painfully beautiful
silver-blonde girl in the centre of the bed. Unlike her parents,
Tara Weston seemed to be unharmed, her pale blue eyes staring up
at Richie in terror as he stepped into the room.

At first, other than the strange posture, hunched in the
middle of the bed, Tara Weston seemed untouched. Then, even in
the dark, Richie could see the strong masking tape circling her
head three or four times to gag her, and the gleaming, near new
looking chains that held her spread-eagled to the bed.

"Mmmmmm!" murmuredTara, blue eyes wide in terror staring
at Richie.

Heartsick at the look of absolute terror in the eyes of
one so young, Richie wondered if the fiend who had killed her
parents had already told her of the "fate worse than death" that
awaited Tara Weston.

"Unless I, Richie Travers, burglar extraordinaire, can
rescue her," he thought. Then seeing his gloveless right hand in
the pale beam of his penlight, he thought, "Extraordinarily inept
that is."

As he approached the bed, Richie was startled to hear
singing from a metre or so beyond the bed. And for the first time
he realised that the murderer of Laura and Stephen Weston was
showering in the en-suite of their daughter's bedroom.

"Don't worry, honey," said Richie as he leant across Tara
Weston, "I'm here to help you." Reaching into his vest pocket, he
removed the plastic wallet holding his picklocks and just hoped
and prayed that he could pick the heavy Yale locks holding the
girl chained to the bed, before the murderer finished cleaning
up.

* * *

Roderick Voss is taking a shower in the small en-suite of
Tara Weston's bedroom, when he hears the clanking of chains. He
grins a broad shit-eater grin, looking forward to the fun that he
is going to have with the twelve-year-old girl soon. "It's hardly
worth showering, only to get dirty again," he thinks, delighted
at the thought of how violently he will abuse the virginal girl
before killing her.

Of course he could take her with him. Keep her chained to
His bed as a personal sex slave as others before him had done.
But he realises that this would be suicidally dangerous. Others
before him have also served decades in prison when their love
captives have managed to escape, or get found still alive. "No,
better to have her violently for a few hours till just before
dawn, then kill her before leaving the estate," he thinks. "After
all, dead girls tell no tales!

"Still, she is gorgeous." Most parents like to believe
their little girl is the most beautiful girl in the world. In the
Westons's case, they just might be right. "But she will be a
gorgeous corpse soon," he decides. "After I've had a few hours of
pleasure with her."

Hearing the chains clinking in the next room, Roderick
Voss smiles, knowing there is no way that Tara Weston can escape
the four Yale locks. Yet he is pleased in a way that she is a
fighter and will not stop trying. Her parents had not even
pleaded for their lives. They had just stared at him with big
cow-eyes, too afraid to even try to run as he slaughtered first
Laura, then Stephen. But youngTarahad kicked and scratched like a wildcat.

Voss has had fun subduing the silver-haired minx. He
smirks like a village idiot as he thinks of the still greater
pleasure that he is going to take from her nubile young body,
before killing her.

Excitement mounting, Voss reaches up to turn off the
shower, then steps out of the cubicle and reaches for a
towel.

* * *

In the bedroom, Richie Travers had picked the locks
holding Tara Weston's hands in place. He had just started to pick
the lock holding her left foot to the bed, when the shower in the
en-suite suddenly went off.

"Oh no!" said Tara, having painstakingly removed the four
rolls of masking tape around her head, doing her best not to cry
out at the pain as the tape tore at her blonde hair, and the
delicate flesh of her face.

"Don't worry, honey, I'll get you out of here in time,"
said Richie. Only hoping he wasn't making promises that he
couldn't keep.

Richie almost cried aloud in delight as the third Yale
popped open. But he realised that he only had seconds to pick the
fourth lock and get the girl onto her feet before the murderer
came looking for her.

"Please hurry," whispered the girl, in a terrified voice
that made her sound half of her twelve years.

* * *

In the en-suite Roderick Voss is slowly towelling himself
off. He almost starts dressing, but realises that there's no
point, since he will be naked again soon anyway. He snickers as
he thinks of the sexual agony he is about to inflict upon the
young girl. From past experience he knows that he will enjoy the
girl's pain and terror even more than the physical act of
sex.

"Well, as much," he says, laughing sadistically.

Draping his clothes carefully over his left shoulder,
Voss starts across toward the door to the bedroom, calling,
"Coming, ready or not!"

He hears a terrified whimper from Tara Weston and is
thrilled by her fear.

As the en-suite door began to swing open, Richie grabbed
the young girl by the shoulders and all but threw her off the
bed. For a few seconds the chains tangled and it looked as though
they might not get away in time before the door swung
open.

But seeing the look of absolute terror in the girl's pale
blue eyes, Richie grabbed her arms with both hands and tugged
with all his might. "No point being gentle with her, if it means
leaving her in the grip of that pervert!" thought Richie as he
strained to tug the girl loose from the bed.

Finally the tangled chains pulled loose, and Richie
stumbled backwards, almost falling to the floor with the
twelve-year-old girl on top of him.

Staggering a little, he just managed to keep his footing.
And hearing the girl's startled yelp, Richie flashed her a broad
smile, only hoping that she could see it in the dark.

"Can you walk, honey?" he asked, placing the girl gently
on her feet.

"Y ... yes, I think so," she said hesitantly, clinging to
Richie Travers for support.

Grinning his broadest shit-eater grin, Roderick Voss
pushes the en-suite door open, almost laughing aloud in delight
at the brutality (both sexual and otherwise) that he intends
inflicting upon the gorgeous silver-blonde girl before killing
her.

"Okay, baby, the fun is ready to be..." calls Voss,
stopping in shock as he stares at the empty bed. He sees the
chains still in place, the four Yale locks, now mysteriously
open, and long strands of brown masking tape with tufts of
silver-blonde hair attached. But no sign of Tara Weston.

"Where the ...?" says Voss. Then hearing shuffling
movement, he looks across just in time to see the bedroom door
swing shut.

"How in the hell?" he asks no one in particular. He
hurriedly pulls on his slacks, shoes and vest, not bothering with
his under garments, then leaps across the bed, unconcerned by the
clinking of the chains as he heads toward the door to the
corridor. "This place is like a fortress," he thinks aloud. "It
could take days to track her down if she gets out of hearing
range."

As he races toward the door, he wonders if Tara Weston is
game enough to head toward the wide staircase to try to reach
ground level to go for help. "Then it really will be a race!" he
thinks, confident that with four hours gym work a week for the
last twenty years, he is fitter and faster than the young girl
and will easily overtake her.

* * *

Doing his best not to pull the young girl off her feet,
Richie started to drag her down the corridor in the direction
where he hoped the twin staircases were. "Let's just hope I
haven't got myself turned about in the dark!" he thought, hoping
he wasn't leading them both deeper into danger, away from the
stairs, not toward them.

"No, no," criedTara,
pulling back against him as he started toward the stairs. "Not
that way."

"But we have to make a run for it," said Richie, thinking
that the girl was still confused from her recent ordeal.

"No, he'll catch us on the stairs," said the girl,
thinking more clearly than the man. "The lift. We can take it
down to the ground floor while he's still on the third or fourth
floor."

"Good thinking," said Richie, beaming at the beautiful
girl.

* * *

In the corridor Roderick Voss stops to get his bearings,
and allows his eyes to adjust to the dark. Hearing footsteps to
the left, he smiles a broad shit-eater grin, thinking Tara Weston
is heading for the stairs after all.

"Here I come,Tarababy!" calls the killer. "I hope you've got your running
shoes on, if you think you can beat me to the ground
floor."

At first he is greeted by only silence and Voss fears
that the girl has gone into hiding instead. Then he hears the
metallic screech of the elevator door being pulled open, and he
grins broadly again.

"I've got you now, little one!" he calls after the
fleeing girl as he starts at an easy trot toward the elevator.
"You won't believe all the exquisitely painful things that I'm
going to do with you, before sending you on to heaven to join
your mummy and daddy."

Hearing the girl whimper in terror, Voss chuckles aloud,
confident that he has as good as recaptured her.

"Running away wasn't very nice, baby. I'm going to have
to punish you for that!" he calls. This time he is a little
disappointed to hear no answering whimper from the girl.

* * *

"This way, this way," called Tara Weston, pointing.
Although she was still a little unsteady on her feet after being
in the cramped position, chained to her bed.

"Well, I'm glad you know the way," thought Richie, having
got himself more than a little turned about in the dark. His eyes
had already adjusted as much as possible to the dark. However, on
the fifth floor of an unlit building, with all the drapes drawn,
there was a limit to how much his eyes could really adjust. So,
despite his best attempts at stealth, Richie was barely able to
avoid collisions with stationary objects lining both sides of the
corridor: fancy jade or plaster knickknacks on individual small
stands. Knickknacks which must have seemed a good buy to one of
the Westons when they had purchased them, but were now just a
nuisance, turning the unlit corridor into an obstacle
course.

At her insistence Richie ledTarapast the first staircase and was
relieved to see the elevator cage just past the stairs. "I guess
it doesn't matter how much clanking and grinding it makes now.
Only that bastard behind us will hear it. And with a little luck
he'll never be able to run down five flights of stairs as quickly
as the lift can travel."

By the time they had reached the elevator, to Richie's
reliefTaraseemed to be able
to stand on her own feet. However, that was the least of their
worries, as they soon discovered.

"What's wrong?" asked Richie as the elevator refused to
budge. Although he had never been particularly claustrophobic
before, Richie felt a little giddy in the cramped cage, wondering
if it was only because it reminded him of the years of his life
that he had wasted in prison.

"I don't know," saidTara, frantically trying to get the
elevator to start.

"Let's get out of here," said Richie, pulling the door
open again.

"No, we'll never outrun him."

"It doesn't matter, we'll find some place to hide," said
Richie. He pulled the girl out of the elevator and toward the
second flight of stairs. "Anything would be better than being
trapped in that cage. Even trying to outrun a homicidal maniac,"
thought Richie as they fled the iron-sided elevator.

"Come on, we can hide on the fourth floor," he insisted,
as the girl continued to pull against him, reluctant to leave the
imagined safety of the private elevator.

To Richie's relief, after a few seconds the young girl
stopped tugging against him, and they began to run hand in hand
down the wide staircase, doing their best not to thunder down the
stairs and give away their position to the pursuing
maniac.

"Try to step lightly, even when running," Richie
whispered. Then he had to fight not to fall down the stairs after
almost tripping as he turned to glance back at the blonde
girl.

He somehow resisted the inclination to scream out,
knowing that it would alert the murderer. Instead, he reached for
the rounded wooden newel post, grateful that he was running near
the hand rail, not down the centre of the staircase. For a few
seconds his gloveless right hand slid along the shiny banner
rail, his fear-slickened fingers failing to find a grip. But just
in time, as he seemed certain to somersault into darkness, his
hand began to grip. And, with a little help from the near frantic
twelve-year-old girl pulling on his other arm, he managed to
steady himself, find his balance and stop himself from
falling.

Unable to resist the temptation to at least heave a sigh
of relief, Richie tried to keep his voice even as he said, "All
right, let's go." And a little more carefully now, they started
back down the stairs toward the fourth floor.

As they reached the landing to the fourth floor, Richie
was tempted to keep dragging the girl down the stairs, thinking,
"Only four more flights to go." But logic told him that the girl
was right, they could never race the maniac all the way to the
ground floor. Much better to hide in the spacious mansion and
hope to find a working phone. Or at least, if they could elude
the maniac until dawn he was bound to flee.

"Thankfully we don't know who he is and can't identify
him. So catching us shouldn't be as big a priority as getting
away," thought Richie. Only wondering if a maniac could think
logically enough to reason that out.

* * *

Roderick Voss is smiling in delight as he pulls up at the
stationary elevator. Of course, the girl couldn't get it started
downward to escape. Voss had been careful to disable the elevator
before even entering the fifth floor suites.

The smile is soon wiped off his face though, when he
realises that the girl has abandoned the elevator.

"Damn!" he curses, wondering if the little brat is hiding
somewhere on this floor? Or whether she is foolish enough to try
racing him to the ground floor after all?

He looks about the darkened corridor, tempted to start
turning on the lights. But he wonders whether this might help the
troublesome twelve-year-old more than him?

"I'm coming to get you, baby! I know exactly where you
are!" he calls, hoping to draw at least a whimper from Tara
Weston to lead him in her direction. At first he is disappointed,
thinking his ruse has failed. Then he hears a sound like someone
stumbling on the second staircase, just past the elevator and
realises that she is foolish enough to try racing him down to the
ground level after all.

"Here I come, baby," he calls, as he starts to run toward
the staircase. "I can see you!"

He chuckles at the lie, hoping it has unnerved the girl.
He is a little disconcerted that the girl has managed to escape
from the four Yale locks. He wonders if that is where she has
suddenly got this courage from? Or whether he was careless and
failed to lock them properly.

"But I can't have failed to snap shut all four locks!" he
thinks. He starts to wonder if the girl is a little too cunning
for him. He wonders whether he should simply abandon the girl and
flee to safety before dawn breaks? But his libido is afire and he
is determined to have the girl as violently as possible before
leaving the Weston estate. "I'll fuck her to death!" he thinks,
grinning like a loon at the thought of how much he is going to
hurt the twelve-year-old girl before killing her.